Visual experience language¶
Meaning takes visual form
A generated surface makes the current intent clear
The visual composer turns a governed semantic outcome into an experience that is calm, direct, responsive, and suited to the person and moment.
The semantic outcome comes first¶
The renderer receives meaning that has already been assembled and checked by the responsible platform services. This semantic outcome carries facts, relationships, status, provenance, uncertainty, choices, actions, confirmation, privacy, cancellation, errors, and recovery.
The renderer composes that state visually and relays the person's interaction. It does not decide identity, consent, policy, recipients, disclosure, incident state, or actuation. The expression planner coordinates modality selection and fallback.
Give the current intent a clear center¶
Visual composition emphasizes what the person is doing now. Supporting context remains available in proportion to its relevance. Persistent information earns its place by helping the person understand, decide, act, or continue later.
Purposeful
Every visible element supports meaning, progress, a choice, an action, or recovery.
Composed
Spatial relationships, typography, imagery, regions, and sequence create a coherent field.
Progressive
The experience leads with what matters now and makes supporting detail easy to reach.
Responsive
Layout and interaction adapt to the display, input capabilities, environment, and personal preferences.
Traceable
Changes in state connect to the person's intent, a visible system event, or a safety requirement.
Recoverable
Cancel, undo, retry, defer, and recovery remain present when the semantic outcome provides them.
Use structure to improve understanding¶
The visual experience can use text, imagery, direct controls, lists, tables, cards, panels, timelines, maps, or other structures when they fit the content and intent. Their value comes from the meaning they organize rather than from a persistent application shell.
Navigation can support exploration, history, settings, and durable work. A person should understand where they are, what can happen next, and how to return. Familiar patterns are welcome when they reduce effort and preserve agency.
Let information density follow the task¶
A quick status check can be glanceable. Research can support dense comparison and source review. Health, financial, and legal work can show exact values, provenance, uncertainty, and consequences. The person can ask for more or less detail and retain that preference.
Progressive disclosure can use spatial focus, expansion, sequencing, dialogue, or navigation. Important facts and recovery controls remain available without requiring the person to remember hidden state.
Make time and progress understandable¶
The surface acknowledges input promptly and presents honest status for work that continues. Progress can be expressed through text, steps, elapsed state, motion, sound, haptics, or another perceivable form appropriate to the task.
Known progress should be specific. Uncertain work can explain what is happening and when the person will receive another update. Interruption preserves enough state to resume or recover.
Use motion with purpose¶
Motion can communicate relationship, focus, state change, causality, progress, and completion. Its pace reflects urgency, cognitive load, and personal preference. Calm motion uses restrained timing and physically understandable transitions.
Reduced-motion settings receive an equally complete experience through stillness, immediate state changes, text, sound, haptics, or other selected cues. Meaning never depends on animation alone.
Express presence without demanding attention¶
Presence can be still, visual, auditory, tactile, or ambient. It communicates availability and sensing state at a level suited to the environment. Active capture, consequential work, urgency, and completion use clear perceivable signals.
Quiet is valuable when nothing needs attention. Visible status is valuable when the person is waiting, deciding, or monitoring an outcome.
Coordinate with native modalities¶
Visual expression can work alone or alongside conversation, Braille, sign, touch, switches, AAC, haptics, or future modalities. Each expression draws from the same semantic state while using its own structure and pacing.
The visual surface avoids becoming a required intermediary for another modality. A conversational or Braille experience remains native and complete. When modalities operate together, they share state and complement one another.
Reinforce trust and consequential choices¶
Sensitive decisions show the person, purpose, information, provider, recipient, consequence, reversibility, cost, and recovery that apply. Visual emphasis reflects actual urgency and supports comprehension without creating pressure.
The renderer presents confirmation and returns the person's decision to the responsible service. Physical action, financial movement, disclosure, and other high-impact work proceed only through their authorized lifecycle.
Review every visual experience¶
Ask:
- Is the current intent and status easy to understand?
- Does each element earn attention through useful meaning or control?
- Are sources, uncertainty, privacy, and consequences clear?
- Can the person navigate, confirm, cancel, correct, and recover?
- Does the experience remain complete with reduced motion and at supported reflow and zoom settings?
- Can another modality express the same semantic state natively?